


slip away, across the universe

by hissingmiseries



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Heart-to-Heart, One Shot, Post-Battle, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hissingmiseries/pseuds/hissingmiseries
Summary: "I wanted you," he says, quietly. "By my side. Ruling together."Rey pulls her hair back, wipes salt from her eyes. "We'd have torn the galaxy apart.""It would have been worth it."Ben and Rey, after the final battle.





	slip away, across the universe

**Author's Note:**

> you know when you think of a scene for a fanfic but can't think of anything that could prelude it, come after it or any storyline it would fit into???? this is it.
> 
> contains: post-battle scenario, mentions of multiple major character deaths, scenes of blood/violence. amateur knowledge of star wars canon/terminology, very generous capabilities of the force+force bond. everyone is lowkey ooc. please let me know if you feel i should tag anything else!
> 
> takes place post-tlj, probably post-ep9; towards the end of the trilogy. basically ep9's after-credits scene. their relationship is a bit more established than it was in tlj.

 

 

"Rey?" Ben says. He looks older and worn out with bits of him missing, but his whole face lights up, glowing like he's made of fire, like he's burning on the inside. Then he bites his lip and looks down, like he's holding back, like he can't let himself feel like he does. Blood has dried in patches on his forehead, over his eyebrow, and there are chunks missing from his cape.

Kriff.

Rey sighs. She's too tired for this. For the past three years, it's been the war; for the past one, it's been Ben. Ben Solo with his dark eyes and his red saber and his power that made Rey, a Jedi, blink. Ben, who looked at her like they weren't each other's undoing, like she was the sun in a world that had never seen light before.

 

There's too much smoke in the air, everything is grey. Rey has soot all over her face and she looks so tired; the war took it out of her months ago but now she has bruises and wrinkles where she didn't have them before and tears in her skin. Ben shivers. Rey thinks she sees blood on his uniform.

"Ben," Rey says, and she thinks the Force is stirring. The world blinks into technicolour.

Around them, the silence stretches on. She curls her fingers around her staff and revs the Force in her veins, for strength. She is shaking. Her whole body is vibrating.

 

She hasn't forgotten Ben's words, and they echo in her head, run around on repeat like a spell:

 _You make me feel alive_.

 

-

 

( _Resistance Statement #952: 36 ABY_

_Heavy losses have been reported following a conflict with First Order troops on the planet Altair 3 (Altair System, Thrasybule Sector). Amongst those fallen include General Leia Organa and General Caluan Ematt, a substantial amount of our fighter pilots including Captain Poe Dameron, and the majority of our army troops. The deceased of the Battle of Altair will be not forgotten._

_We are heavily indebted to the efforts of Rey, the last Jedi, whom we give our thanks. Her decisions subsequent to these events are hers, and hers alone._

_The Resistance will regroup at the nearest safe location and consider our losses and next steps._

_May the Force be with us._ )

 

-

 

Rey has become far too familiar with death, these past few years. No more comfortable, but familiar. It seems that though the Resistance has offered the best years of her life, it seems just as eager to snatch them from her before she can truly acclimatise.

When she wakes, she does so upon a salt plain, and she figures out the following pieces of information:

 

Most of the Resistance has been decimated.

Finn and Poe among them.

The First Order ships have vanished, as have the AT-ATs. What's left of the Resistance armoury has vanished too.

Leia has died. There's a weird, Leia-shaped hole in the Force; Rey can feel it.

There is nothing alive on this planet but her and what little fauna is scurrying around, curious now the shooting has stopped.

Once again she is entirely, unforgivably alone.

 

She figures this out from looking around, seeing the upturned earth and the smell of copper in the air, strong enough to taste. The sky is sunset orange and the salt plains are huge swathes of blue and pink, spoiled by activity, with singed forests somewhere in the distance which the army of AT-ATs charged through. It's so, so cold; Rey isn't sure if that's the atmosphere or the blood loss. Her double vision suggests the latter.

She thinks,  _I can't go back_. There is sunlight on her face, catching her eyelashes.

Nothing answers. Usually she would expect something back from the Force—corporal or not—but it seems too busy stitching itself back together with a ferocity she has not felt since that night in the forest. Poor thing. To lose the Skywalker siblings in such a short space of time. Rey isn't sure who she feels the most sorry for: the Force, or Ben.

 

She can't go back. She can't bring that to the Resistance. She's brought enough to the Resistance. She wraps her arms around herself to stop the shivering and thinks about broken sabers, the length of Ben's weapon exploding into sparks. When she was training, Rey would polish her blue saber and slash at rocks and picture Ben's body, being hacked into pieces at her own hand.

Rey is a Jedi now. She pictures Ben in his lair, sat upon his throne. Firmly in one piece.

 

-

 

She finds Poe in his crashed X-Wing. There's nothing graphic, no blown-apart skulls or missing limbs. He's still strapped into his seat, eyes closed, hand curled around the trigger like he'll spring awake at any moment and blast the First Order into another galaxy, how he was always professing that he would.

Rey cries; she remembers the way he'd tuck strands of hair behind her ear and say,  _You're doin' good, kid._

She has never enjoyed the whole "some stars shine so bright, all they can do is burn out" rhetoric. It has always felt so uncomfortably true.

 

-

 

You would think it would be harder to see such chaos, but it's not. Now, it's quiet. It's peaceful. There is nothing left to burn.

 

Instead, Rey can barely stand for the feeling of the Force inside of her, rushing through her cells and blood vessels and tearing apart her head, trying to deal with the sudden imbalance. It has sensed the lack of Luke, the lack of Leia and Ackbar and Finn—a physical embodiment of the Light—and it doesn't know what to do, so it is doing everything at once.

She wants to close her eyes and call for someone, a lost ship releasing a distress signal, but she doesn't have the energy. All she can really do is wobble and breathe. She doesn't even have the strength to cry anymore.

 

She thinks about Ben, though. She thinks about Ben as hard as she can.

She thinks about Ben in the way of dreams, of hope. Of a romanticised beam of sunlight filtering through the atmosphere and falling across her hand.

 

The thing about the battle was that at least in the battle, Rey had Ben. As opposing as they were, as different as their goals are they had each other and they felt it, felt each other's steps and thoughts and the movement of atoms which each swing of their sabers, and that's how they survived. She charged the Force in her cells and he did so too and it drained them, but they're alive, aren't they? Even now, the Force is still clinging onto both of them, unwilling to say goodbye just yet.

It's worse to live to see the aftermath. Now, her heart rate is calming; all of her is settling, like dust. The smoke is clearing and the true destruction is becoming clear, in heaps at her feet. 

The weight of responsibility anchors her feet to the floor.

 

-

 

She is all right. She is alive. Nothing feels like fate, but that isn't a new feeling to Rey; she is sick with grief and confusion for the first few hours, but when that passes, there is a large abyss.

Things are floating along. Rey is floating along.

The Force, unfortunately, cannot reverse time.

 

Then she sees it: or, more accurately,  _him_. Shaking, the way he did in Snoke's lair when he was trying to pretend the world wasn't falling apart around his ears. He has his back to her and there are large, claw-like lines down the length of his body, carved into the flesh that's frying in the cool air.

He senses her a millisecond after she does. All of his body turns to face her in an instant, as does hers, and it surprises her that such an instinctive reaction isn't a Force thing anymore: it's just a Rey thing.

He looks weak. He looks  _so_  weak.

Things make sense: he escaped with the Order, on the reigning Star Destroyer which disappeared from the sky with impossible speed. He must now be in the med-bay, being patched up. 

Rey feels sick and horrible. The idea of Kylo Ren escaping with his life whilst Poe—sweet, kind, caring—lies dead? It just isn't fair. It makes her feel like the Force is taking the kriff.

It makes her feel like she's off balance, but like she never knew what true balance was until she met Ben, and she was just pretending the whole time. 

 

"You're alive," Ben says, and there is something in his voice.

Rey swallows: is she really? Is this living? "Somehow. After your entire fleet tried to kill me."

He looks around, as if trying to exact her location. She knows he can't—their bond, however persistent, is still as limited as ever. She thanks the Force every day for it. As liberating as it is to have somebody there, somebody to vent to and receive something back from, it just happens to be the leader of the organisation responsible for this mess. Responsible for the smouldering wreckage, for Poe's lifeless eyes. For BB-8's control panel being a mess of nuts and bolts on the salt.

"Both sides lost big numbers," he says, then, softer, "Don't blame yourself."

She scoffs. "I don't blame myself. I blame  _you_."

“Really? Because we found you somehow. It wasn’t a lucky guess.”

”It can’t have been me,” she says. “You can’t see where I am.” Her stomach bottoms out; the Force can’t be favouring him, surely. She’d feel it.

He shrugs. “Then I guess we flew around the galaxy until I felt you were there.”

She isn’t sure if he’s joking, to be honest. Ben is nothing if not persistent, she’s learnt this.

”Your rebels like their desolate planets, don’t they?” he continues, infuriatingly smug; a bird flies above, a moving shadow across the landscape. “You’d think they’d find somewhere a bit more sheltered to take cover.”

She grits her teeth. Kylo Ren glares back at her. “It’s not like you gave us a choice.”

“It’s a war,” he says. “What was I supposed to do?” 

The Force surges, between them. They both feel it.

When she speaks, Rey’s voice sounds impossibly quiet. “You could have given us a chance. I gave _you_ one.”

Sometimes she dreams of that day: Snoke’s lair, his extended arm. An offer. Hanging in the air, heavy and dense like a storm cloud.

 

(Sometimes she dreams about it. 

Alternate universes where she took his hand.)

 

“Don’t make this personal,” he says; Rey sees venom, bitter and green. “You picked your side.”

She nods, solemn. “And you picked yours.”

 

(Sometimes Ben dreams about it, too.)

 

-

 

She finds Finn near the forest. His death was not as graceful as Poe’s: there are Blaster holes in his chest, in his arms. His white shirt is redder than death itself.

When she touches his hand, she sees everything in blaring colour. Sees the Falcoln, sees Canto Bight. Feels the press of Rose’s lips against her own. Sees a Stormtrooper helmet with three red lines across the visor.

 _Finn_ , she cries. _You brave thing._

 

Rey went to the war, but before that she spent a lot of time running.

Bravery is hard to find but you find it anyway. Rey learned it from the best.

 

"He deserved better than this," Rey says, pawing at her eyes. Every cell in her body wants her to turn round and strangle Kylo until he turns blue in her hands. "He deserved better than a—a shallow grave on a random planet."

Kylo says, "He was a Stormtrooper first."

Fire surges through her veins. "You were a Solo. Still are."

Ben twitches; not Kylo this time, Ben. Rey can feel it—that jerk in the Force, that perfect imbalance. 

(It tends to happen when Ben touches the Light.)

 

-

 

The conflict in Ben Solo’s soul is a difficult thing to describe, but she’ll give it a shot: it’s something she’s felt herself, once upon a time. Back when Luke was alive and the truth was tearing her apart, limb from limb. When just thinking hurt.

Imagine a time when you felt lonely, as lonely as you ever have. 

Rey always thought she was the loneliest soul in the galaxy until she met Ben. 

 

-

 

A sandstorm rolls by, this column of pink and blue. It gets in Rey’s hair and eyes and makes her choke. 

“You’re still in my head,” he says when she turns around, sees him there amongst the debris. His attire makes him look as if his shape were cut from the landscape, nothing but black underneath.  A bit like him, but not really. “I don’t get it.”

Rey looks at him; she thinks she sees him glitch, his torso jumping aside for a brief second. "The Force isn't done with us."

"I don't understand what we have left to do," he says. 

Rey frowns. "I didn't realise you wanted to be rid of me so much."

"I don't," he says, quickly. He has a longing in his voice, a longing she understands. Ben Solo, who made her forget reason, who made her forget who she was.

Ben Solo, who looked at her with death in his hands and told her,  _run_. Told her,  _I'll keep you safe._

 

When he doesn't continue, Rey approaches him. The salt grinds to powder beneath her feet. "You're hurt," she says. "Show me."

She reaches for him and he pulls back, automatic, the way magnets repel; it confuses her. There have been nights where they have clung to each other, white-knuckled, heat curling around them, through them. She has watched him come undone in every way shape or form, an image of him from lightyears away, as solid as anything corporal. She knows what his skin feels like, the calloused touch of his fingertips.

(She remembers Ben used to touch her like this, sometimes; in slow wondering awe, that Rey was his, that Rey was there. Like he couldn’t believe Rey was real.)

"No need to ask how it happened." He sounds hurt. "I'm sure the Resistance is thrilled."

She resists the urge to tell him what little there is left of the Resistance, and how little they would care about Kylo Ren's flesh wounds. "I know how it happened," she says. "I want to make sure you're okay."

From across the void, he narrows his eyes. "You've changed your tune."

They had seen each other, on the salt plains: their sabers had cracked and sparked and they'd felt the air between them tense. The Force around them, between them, holding its breath.

(It still surprises Rey how easily they manage to do that. Stop the world, just with their thoughts. Just with a look.)

"I didn't cut you up," she argues, going for his arm. He moves again, in sync.

He says, "You didn't stop it."

She rolls her eyes. "Because I could have done that."

"You've done it before."

His arm looks—kriff, it looks worse up close. There's a white accent amongst the crimson that makes Rey's stomach do a funny turn. "I was protecting us. You're welcome. Why haven't you had that treated yet?"

He shrugs; it is very rare for Ben not to care about something but she can tell he is not in pain. Sometimes she wonders if he really is human. "Protecting us? Out of the goodness of your heart? I'm sure."

"Because you've never had an ulterior motive," she spits: she thinks of Snoke's lair, of Kylo holding out his hand and offering her the galaxy. How she, of course, was nothing without him.

Rey was younger, then. She needed belonging the way a child does, groping unconsciously for someone who isn't there. She learnt different with the Resistance.

(But now the Resistance are dead, and she has nobody again; it is a wholly familiar feeling.)

 

"I thought," she says, "that you wouldn't look at me and see your equal. I was right. You didn't. You looked at me and saw an opportunity."

He doesn't deny it. He just stands there, careful not to look her in the eyes, careful to keep his eyes on the sun. "You never answered my question. About the dark side."

"Some people," she says, "would take the hint."

"I'm not most people," he retorts.

She closes her eyes and leans into the breeze, wishing there was something solid which she could fall upon. She feels high, like she is levitating. She sighs; years ago she likely would have argued, but now she is older, more seasoned, and there is steel in her core where there was once porcelain. "You know why. You knew it when you killed Snoke." 

His hand stills. "That was different."

"Okay," she says.

They have rarely talked about the Force. Not in detail. About themselves, yes: about themselves, they have bared their hearts. But not about their only real similarity.

She supposes that's strange, between friends. Or whatever they are.

She says, "The Force would never have accepted it. It's like Snoke said: darkness rises—" He looks at her, big brown eyes. "—and light to meet it. If I'd have aligned myself differently, the Force would have lost half of itself. The consequences would have—I don't know what they would have been like."

Ben knows; she sees it when she looks at him. Stars exploding, galaxies collapsing. A blue lightsaber bleeding red.

"By that logic," he says, "I couldn't have gone to the light."

He's looking at her like he can see something there, in her. It makes her skin itch.

She stands up. "I don't know."

 

"I wanted you," he says, quietly. "By my side. Ruling together."

Rey pulls her hair back, wipes salt from her eyes. "We'd have torn the galaxy apart."

"It would have been worth it," he says.

She thinks he might mean it, too.

 

-

 

They spoke a lot. After Crait, Rey had a lot to explain to people: one of them being why she was talking to thin air every now and again. Finn didn't take much convincing— _it's the first sign of madness, y'know_ —and Poe just smirked and shook his head and didn't ask. 

Leia saw it first. Which makes sense.

 

They were training. Their lightsabers were clashing and it was without menace but it still had that inevitable feeling, the Force moving back and forth, through their lungs and capillaries. Rey was losing; Ben had disarmed her and his saber was to her throat and she thought his hand was shaking, slightly. 

"You need to move your feet quicker," he said. The saber drew in with a hiss. "You keep tripping over yourself."

Rey was sweating; every skin cell was red. 

 

Leia walked in. She didn't know.

Ben disappeared half a second too late, and Leia looked at Rey and said,  _I think there's something you need to tell me,_ so she did.

 

Rey told her everything. About the bond, about his offer. How they fought side by side.

Leia listened and didn't say anything.

 

Rey said a lot of things she didn't mean to say, but she couldn't really stop herself. It's Ben. Even when Rey wasn't supposed to speak, she did.

 

-

 

Ben is on a ship somewhere in the Mid-Rim. It isn't supposed to hurt. It's supposed to be a relief. Ben killed one of his own to protect her; a trooper got too close to Rey and suddenly there was a red line through his chest, burning her cheek. White plastic fell like a rag doll and she saw him for a split second, eyes wide and furious, and then he was gone. It hadn't been the first time he'd saved her—she once joked it was their tradition, she'd get herself in trouble, he'd appear like magic. But then she remembered that fight in the forest, when all she wanted to do was strip the flesh from his very bones and it scared her. The capability of her anger, how little of it she had left.

 

There is not much left of the forest, now. The ground is soil instead of salt and something electronic is sparking in the distance. Rey thinks something could be alive, but she cannot sense movement and if life has taught her anything, it is that her common sense is smarter than her heart.

Rey says, "We would have been awful rulers."

Ben eyes her warily, in the way of Han Solo, how he looked at her when Rey bypassed that compressor. There are moments, Rey thinks, when he looks like his father. In the right light. "You don't believe that." 

"I do," she says. 

He blinks. "You're so powerful."

She feels it go through her, the effect of his words. It startles her. "As powerful as you. Which is why it would never have worked."

"Because I'm a bad influence?" he asks. He is wry, uncharacteristically. Rey has never seen him smirk, because he has never enjoyed what he does.

"You _are_ awful," she says. "And you've taught me a lot."

He shakes his head. "You've never used any of it."

"Yeah, well," she says, and she is smiling. They have developed this, an easy humour, between them. Muddy and deprecating, but it has kept them sane throughout the months. "That's probably for the best."

There is a strange shallowness to his eyes, reflective: he isn't trying to recruit her, like he used to. Still, he says, "There's still time. The dark side would kill for your power. The Resistance has no idea what you're capable of, you're a hired gun—"

"Ben," she interrupts. It feels nice, to be so set in her ways; she remembers when she used to feel light and hollow-boned and all it would take was a breeze to sweep her in either direction. "That ship sailed a long time ago."

He sighs. "Can't blame me for trying."

"Can't blame me for trying, either," she says.

 

Ben is kicking at the floor. Just—irritant little steps.

Rey steps forward and holds her hand out, keeping her teeth closed. Ben feels so different without his mask on and his chest puffed out, in every sense of the word. Kylo Ren feels very big and on fire, like something apocalyptic. Rey knows this is not the truth, that Ben is the most mortal of them all, really, but still, it's terrifying.

"It's not too late for you, either," she says, eventually. He looks at her hand and doesn't move. "I'll say it 'till I'm blue in the face."

Ben looks up at her, under heavy-set eyebrows. "Even if it means tearing the Force apart?"

Rey swallows. Her owns words taste bitter when she has to choke on them.

"Let me be selfish for a minute," she says; and then, softly, "I don't care about the Force. I care about you." She wants to say,  _it'll be alright,_ but it won't, will it? Something would need to fill the gap eventually. Everything the Resistance fought for would come apart, piece by piece.

The idea of it is terrifying. It makes her want to hold onto Ben with both hands. It makes her want to go back in time to when he was a boy and Snoke took him by the shoulders and say,  _no, not yet, please don't take him._

She can't imagine what that's like for Ben.

Well, she can—but only a little. 

She only knows that sometimes—more often than not—it feels like it is tearing him apart.

 

Leia was conflicted. Rey sensed the toss and turn of her thoughts one night, from across the Resistance base: she saw Ben and Han and Luke in her head, and went over with a glass of water in her hand.

They spoke properly for the first time in ages. Leia told Rey to explain herself and Rey couldn't. She could just sit there and tumble over her words, put them in stunted sentences: Ben this, Kylo that, Force this, dark side that. 

Leia said, "It's only natural." She looked tired, that kind of bone-deep tiredness that they all got on one of Kylo's bad days. 

Rey thought the bond between her and Ben was strong, but then she blinked and realised, it must have been nothing compared to that between Ben and Leia. It must have hurt her head, all day. The dark in her son, the guilt of putting it there.

"How is any of this natural?" Rey asked. 

Leia leant across to hug her, and smooth her hair out of her eyes. "You two, being connected the way you are. Something was bound to come out of it."

Rey said, "I don't what that something is," and Leia looked at her with big, familiar eyes.

"You don't love him," she said. She sounded wise. "He frightens you, and he excites you, but you would only end up killing each other." She took Rey's hand; her skin felt war-worn and calloused. "Your differences outweigh your similarities, Rey. Just because you are each other's equal doesn't mean you aren't each other's opposites, too."

 

-

 

There's a bird pecking at someone's body. Rey steps out of the shade and back into the salt, stained orange by the setting sun. She feels kind of sick. There are no ships passing by, none going slow enough to notice her.

She doesn't want to be stuck on this planet forever.

For a second she can't see Ben, but she looks again and he is there, ever present. It's kind of ironic that the only constant in Rey's life is the person she should, by law, hate with every fibre of her being. Maybe she talked herself out of it years ago: hating the person who, despite it all, didn't hate her.

 

Rey leans against a black tree and wraps her arms around herself, for warmth. She says, "Do you regret it?" with careful eyes.

Ben quirks an eyebrow, silent, waits for her to finish.

"Killing your father," she says, bluntly. There are no frills you can really add to a discussion over parental murder. "You could have come home that day, you know. He wasn't lying."

"Because it would have been that easy," he frowns. 

She sighs. "It would have taken time, yeah, but—you could have tried." She pauses. "It wouldn't have hurt to try."

Ben looks at the floor, sweeps his eyes down and away. "No," he says, firmly. "I don't regret it."

 

The sun begins to sink. Ben ripples, as if he were heat emanating from the salt plains. Rey thinks, if she squints a little, she sees an aura; she is definitely overtired. He's pale, he has a pointy little face; Rey wonders if she ever looked like that, all sharp and angular. 

"Nothing would have changed," he says, quietly. "In the long run."

Rey blinks, screws her face up. "Everything would have changed."

Ben shakes his head, the corners of his mouth turned down. "No, not really." There's a careless intonation in his voice that makes Rey want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, hard. 

"Someone with your power, fighting for the Light—"

"The Light doesn't need me," he says. "It has you."

"Okay, but two of us on the same side," she says. "The amount of power we would have had, together—we would have decimated the First Order, we would have—"

Ben closes his eyes and opens them again, slowly, like a cat. "Careful, Rey," he says. "You're starting to sound like an Empress."

 

"This is getting repetitive," Ben drawls. There is something in his eyes. Rey wants it to swallow her whole. "I thought we'd agreed this was our destiny."

Rey deflates, shoulders falling. "I know, I know," she sighs. "It's all the 'what if's'. They drive me crazy, sometimes."

"I know." He nods. "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the risk. Causing the most tectonic shift in the Force since Vader—"

To her own surprise, Rey feels herself smile. Small and feline, but there. "It's one hell of a legacy to leave behind."

 

-

 

Days are short on Altair 3. The air becomes cool and crisp, and Rey sways as she walks, head tipped up to the stars. She does like that she can see them out here, that they look like forever stretched out in gusty black darkness.

She watches a meteor fly past. It's quiet; it's only Ben, standing opposite her, dissipating at the edges.

"Our bond must be getting stronger," she says, thoughtfully. "You haven't flickered out once."

She's so tired, suddenly. She wants to touch him. She wants to feel something real.

 

She moves first, shuffling towards him. "It feels different. I don't know why," she says. It's only now she's so close to him that she can feel the rise and fall of her own shoulders, and see the lack of his. He looks at her with lingering eyes, quietly. "Something's changed, Ben. I can feel it."

A beat passes, then he wets his lips. Some sort of strangled word comes out.

She frowns. "Are you alright?" She thinks maybe he suffered some sort of head wound along with that mangled arm.

He doesn't answer, so she reaches out again; fast this time, a viper launching forward. She goes to curl her fingers around his wrist and feel his pulse on her fingertips but instead she passes straight through him, as if he were a mirage, as if he were a dream.

She tries again. He doesn't breathe.

Her hand goes to his and meets no resistance: only air.

 

"Oh," she says.

This is unexpected.

 

("Do you like having the Force?" he asked, one night. It was late, the moon was up, and neither of them could sleep. Rey was lengthways in her bed and Ben next to her, dimensions apart yet able to feel his breath on her cheek. "With how new you are to it—it's a lot to take in so quickly."

She blinked. She hadn't thought of it in those terms. "It makes me feel like I belong to something," she says, like a confession. She stretches out her fingers along the thigh and then finds his, under the blanket. He has surprisingly soft hands. "Like I'm part of something exclusive. But not when it's just me. Then I just feel like a freak."

"You're not a freak," he says.

"No," she says, very quickly. "I mean, I—I don’t know what I mean. I thought I'd find answers with Luke, but I didn't really know what I was asking."

"Luke didn't do either of us any favours."

Rey hates Luke; hates him in the way of fallen stars, of looking him in the face and knowing it wasn't his fault but it also was and how he kriffed up everything he touched. She hates how well she knows that feeling.

She bumps her shoulder against his. "I feel good here," she says. "I'm starting to, I think."

He blinks at her, startled, like he didn't expect that. "With the Resistance?"

She says, "With someone who knows what it's like."  _Especially when you are just learning to live, yourself._

"It's always an option," he says, eyes dark. "I'm always an option."

"I know," she says, closing her eyes, just for a second. "I'm always an option, too.")

 

She blinks. The wind picks up, around her, in her hair.

"No," she says, and touches him again: she sees her hand behind his arm, through the leather, plain as day on the other side. It is only now she up close that she can see it, too—the haziness of him, the slight transparency. The blue glow she had ascribed to the sand. "No, no."

He doesn't reply. Rey doesn't think she has ever seen Ben look this sad.

It doesn't hit her quickly; instead in fragments, as her hands explore his chest and push through, stopped by nothing. "I don't—wh— _how_?"

"I bled out in the med-bay," he says, simply. "Not enough bacta gel for too many injuries. Quite disappointing, really."

She is crying, then. Just—shaky little sobs.

"Rey, don't," he says, quiet; how ironic, how appallingly unfair that it is only moments when Rey needs to hold him, hold _someone_  that she can't. She thinks, her whole life has been something like this, full of _almost_ s and _nearly there_ s. "It's alright. It's—it's all alright."

The thing is that it isn't. It won't ever be again.

Which is ridiculous, because Rey has lost people before. Better people than Kylo Ren.

It just hasn't quite hurt as bad as this before.

 

"It wasn't supposed to end this quickly," she says. She's hiccupy, short-breathed. "Your future—I saw everything—you were older and—and calm and—"

He reaches out, then remembers. "You saw what you wanted to see," he says. "The Force is an incredible thing but it can't tell the future. Can you imagine if it could? Things would be a lot different."

"You think so?" She wipes her face with the back of her hand.

"Of course," he says. "I'd have seen you coming, for one."

Rey never saw Kylo coming, not in a million years. She didn't see Ben coming, either. That was the biggest surprise of them all.

"No, this is too easy," she says. "You—you were never supposed to _die_. That's not how it was supposed to go." Unspoken: I _was supposed to turn you. You were supposed to make it._

He blinks, and he has those same eyes from the Falcoln, when she slammed the door in his face and he was on his knees and he couldn't do anything to stop it. "The Force had different plans," and it is clarity, in the purest sense of the word.

The Force brought them together. Of course it would be the thing to tear them apart.

 

-

 

Her head is absolutely pounding. She wants to meditate, to try and calm everything down, but there is a good chance she would never pull herself out of it.

(Not that she would mind, because Ben is there now, so she wants to be there too.)

 

"Ben," Rey says. She's sitting on a salt plain with her head between her legs. "The Force is unbalanced. It's making me dizzy."

Ben blinks. "I can't feel it anymore." He sits down opposite her.

"Nothing?" she frowns. "I thought only the Light side could create force ghosts."

"The Sith figured out a way to do it," he says. "It's convoluted, but it gave me a backup." Her silence prompts him forward: "You—imbue an object or location with part of your soul, when you die. Then you can incur it when you want to return."

Rey thinks about it for a second. "You put part of your soul into Altair 3?"

He looks at her, weak, like sunshine through a grimy window on a winter's day and something warm spreads inside her chest; she thinks it might be heartstrings, snapping themselves in sequence.

"I wish I had met you, before—" she starts, weakly.

Ben's brow twitches. "Before—?"

She sighs. "Just, before."

 

-

 

A Resistance ship is approaching. Somebody is coming back for her.

Rey can't find her lightsaber amongst the debris. Her hands are shaking.

Ben puts a non-existent hand on her waist; she doesn't feel it, but she appreciates the sentiment. "I would offer you mine, but—" he trails off.

She smirks at him. "Yours is too heavy," she says. "How you fight with that thing, I'll never know."

"You get used to it," he says. "Especially when you have to."

 

The ship is breaking the atmosphere; it is a small thing, barely big enough for two people. Rey wonders if that is all the Resistance has left.

 _Sorry it took us so long_ , the pilot says over a speaker. The voice echoes through the space, ricocheting off two crashed TIE-fighters and the endless floor.

The ship looks pretty much the same. It sounds the same. The groan of the engine still gives her the same chills as it did when she first heard it.

Ben doesn't notice things like this, anymore. Things slip past him. You become numb to things when you grow up amongst them.

Suddenly, Rey is terrified. Suddenly her hands feel slippery, contactless. She wipes them on her thighs and swallows.

 

"Be careful," Ben says. "The Force will be trying doubly as hard to get you killed, now it needs to—balance itself out."

Rey takes a step forward and rocks back on the heels. "Thank you, for that burst of confidence."

He scoffs to himself, under his breath. "You don't need a pep talk."

She does: more than he'll ever know. "I'll miss you," she says. It sticks in her teeth, in her throat; vibrates through her, the sudden force of it. "I don't want—I just—you should know that."

There is a moment. It stretches out: Rey's breath loud in her ears, Rey's heart pounding in her chest, and Ben Solo's boyish face, the antithesis of his image in every way possible, speechless for probably the first time in his life. 

Rey steps forward, and Ben opens his eyes, his big eyes with their dark lashes and incomparable power and Rey can see there is still so much conflict in there, even in death, even when everything should be at peace. She thinks, that sums Ben up to a tee: a tangle of thorns, a mess of emotion. 

Why anyone would ever think to give him the Force is beyond her.

Ben takes a sharp little breath, like it hurts to do so, like it hurts to do anything, and all Rey wants to do his help him like she always has, and like she always will. But she can't anymore.

She takes another step and Ben steps forward to meet her. She wants his hands on her waist, around her shoulders. She wants to feel her cheek against his chest, wants to hear his heartbeat in her skull like how they used to in those rough nights when Rey would spring awake, sweat-covered and crying and he would be there, like magic. Maybe that's what he is: just magic. Maybe she dreamt that side of him. She would be so lucky.

 

"Ben," Rey says, pulling back. She's shivering again, her lips are parted and there are two spots of colour high on her cheeks. She blames it on the cold, but the cold doesn't explain the warmth inside her heart and the blood running faster in her veins. "Are you, is this—am I going to see you again?"

Ben shouldn't make promises. He should be wary, he should be reasonable. He shouldn't run on impulse, but it is all he knows in life and even though it has gotten him here, all of that wariness is gone, fallen by the wayside in the wake of Rey's mouth, of Rey's hands, of Rey here in flesh and blood.

"I don't know," he says, and he is honest. He has always been honest with her. "I hope so."

 

-

 

When the ship lands, salt and sand are thrown into the air, a painting of pink and blue. It's a small passenger ship, with the Resistance logo painted on the side in faded red. Ben doesn't know much about the makes of ships but Rey does. She could tell him everything about the way it works. 

 

"You know," Ben says, suddenly, "I've always admired you. Even when I hated you, and you wanted to kill me. I've always admired what you can do."

Rey blinks, studies him. She cannot look inside his mind anymore, like she used to. He is a blank canvas once again. 

He continues. "It wasn't Snoke."

"I know," she nods. "It was never Snoke." It always felt too inevitable, too big and all-consuming, for any living creature to have stitched together and planted.

"I never wanted to kill you, either," he says. He is talking like this a lot, now. Like this time she sees him will be the last. Rey hates it, the necessity of it, but she finds it reassuring, too. She carries the weight of the words, the truth of them, and carries them close to her heart. 

She quirks an eyebrow. "My power was too valuable, wasn't it?"

"It wasn't just your power," he says, quietly. "It was at first, maybe. And—partly, it always will be. But it's also you."

Rey smiles to herself; little, under wraps. She thinks that is the most she will probably ever have gotten from Ben Solo, and yet somehow, it is more than she could have ever dreamt of.

 

There's this strange little smile on his face, a knowing sort of look that would terrify anyone else. "The things we could have done together, huh?"

She closes her eyes and it flashes before her, almost too fast to see:

Red, harsh and angry. Stars brightening and collapsing, all in milliseconds. Power, so hot in her limbs it almost burns.

 

When her eyes open, there is nothing. The salt beneath where he stood is flat.

"Oh," she says. "The things we could have done."

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from the beatles. i'm on [twitter](http://twitter.com/hissingmiseries) and [tumblr](http://turnerkanes.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi!


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